Rain finally abates but the news-oriented sports stories poured in

One of the more popular subject matters for sports departments all over Illinois since the spring began is the weather.

Even on Wednesday when I was over in Minooka covering the Indians baseball team the weather was my lede. On Tuesday, I watched as the Morris soccer team played Rochelle at home in a steady downpour with the temperatures in the 40s.

Of course, the rain itself was the source of a major story last week when the unrelenting storms created epic and record-setting flooding. This was, of course, a major news story for us here at the MDH and I was able to find a great angle for the sports section when I stumbled upon several MCHS athletes who were helping sand bagging efforts at Elliott Manor.

It was a real feel-good story to watch the boys in action, though I have to admit feeling a little guilty that I wasn’t actually physically helping out. In fact one of my sources said to me: “I’d rather be doing this (sand bagging) than running around and taking pictures all day”. Which is exactly what I was doing in an effort to help you readers gain the full scope of the horrific event.

There was one more aspect of the guys helping out that I decided not to use. Several of them referred to the flooding as ‘The Last Hurrah’, but none could really explain why. Just for the record, though, many of those athletes viewed the flooding as ‘The Last Hurrah’.

Two days before waking up and wading through Morris for a flooding story, there was, of course the Boston Marathon bombings. I was lucky that I knew of a Morris runner who was competing in the event and had his contact information. At around 4:30 that same afternoon, I was talking to Rick Dudley and his wife Jennifer Jones from their hotel in Boston, just two blocks from the general bombing area. Also found out that day that Javier Martinez of Minooka was also at the event and was able to turn around a story for MC Life, too.

Then this past Monday, MCHS held a ‘Heads Up Concussions’ meeting that I attended. That essentially meant that I had covered and reported on four news stories in a seven-day span. That’s a lot different than a usual week in which I report on baseball, softball and soccer. Still, even though it was unusual, so were the circumstances. All in the line of duty. Hopefully you appreciated the coverage as much as I did covering it.